The Cisco Data Center 3.0 strategy helps increase IT efficiency, responsiveness, and resilience by optimizing existing data center network assets for mission-critical workloads, and also by laying the foundation for the next-generation data center to more efficiently meet the demands placed on IT for greater collaboration, quicker access to applications and information, and compliance with ever-stricter regulatory requirements.

Visibility and control in the Cisco storage network enables service providers and IT departments to optimize for the quality-of-service (QoS) levels required to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for internal and external customers.

Table 1 summarizes the main features and benefits of Cisco Fabric Manager.

Table 1. Main Cisco Fabric Manager Features

Feature

Description

Benefits

Federation

• Federation of up to 10 Cisco Fabric Manager servers to manage and report on a large number of fabrics using a single management pane

• Scalability and improved response time for discovery and reporting tasks

Discovery

• Cisco Discovery Protocol, Fibre Channel Generic Services (FC-GS), Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF), and Small Computer System Interface 3 (SCSI-3) for discovery of devices and interconnects on one or more fabrics

Cisco Device Manager can be used for detailed switch provisioning and provides a graphical representation of each Cisco MDS 9000 Family switch chassis or Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch chassis, including the installed switching modules, the supervisor modules, the status of each port within each module, the power supplies, and the fan assemblies (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Cisco Device Manager

Use the Device view to perform switch-level configuration, including the following:

A group of two or more Cisco Fabric Manager servers can work together in a federation to provide a higher level of scalability, availability, and reliability for automated data center fabric management tasks. Federation distributes data center fabric management responsibility among the Cisco Fabric Manager servers (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Manage All Fabrics Discovered in the Federation

Federation uses a central database to persist data and share common information among all servers, with each physical server mapped as a logical entity in the federation. With the capability to move fabrics across the federation, the storage administrator can load-balance Cisco Fabric Manager server workloads and increase overall storage network management scalability, availability, and reliability.

Federation of Cisco Fabric Manager servers allows comprehensive reporting across all fabrics distributed among the servers in the federation.

The Cisco Discovery Protocol is a device discovery protocol that runs on the Cisco MDS 9000 Family, Cisco Nexus Family, and Cisco Catalyst Family products. In addition to Cisco Discovery Protocol, Cisco Fabric Manager uses standards-based discovery protocols, including FC-GS, FSPF, and SCSI-3, for discovery of devices and interconnects on one or more fabrics.

For large enterprises, a SAN fabric can span multiple geographical regions consisting of hundreds of VSANs and switches, and thousands of ports. VSAN scoping allows data center administrators to discover switch ports and end devices attached to VSANs specific to a geographic region. VSAN scoped discovery limits which VSAN within a fabric can be discovered and viewed (Figure 6).

Cisco Fabric Manager and DCNM clients can be launched from the respective switch icon in Cisco Fabric Manager or DCNM topology maps. For example, in Cisco Fabric Manager, the Cisco Nexus Family switch icon allows users to launch Cisco DCNM by double-clicking or by choosing Open in DCNM from the context menu (Figure 7).

Cisco UCS Manager provides centralized management capabilities, creates a unified management domain, and serves as the central nervous system of the Cisco Unified Computing System (Figure 9). Cisco UCS Manager is embedded device-management software that manages the system from end to end as a single logical entity through an intuitive GUI, a CLI, or an XML API. Cisco UCS Manager implements role- and policy-based management using service profiles and templates. Autodiscovery allows Cisco UCS Manager to detect, inventory, manage, and provision any system component that is added or changed. When present in the data center, and when Cisco UCS Manager is installed, Cisco UCS Manager can be launched in context from the Cisco Fabric Manager topology map.

A template configuration engine for custom report generation enables the creation, configuration, and deletion of default and custom report templates. Default SAN health and daily status reports can be customized to help data center administrators with day-to-day operational tasks and reporting requirements.

Figure 10. Customize Existing Report Templates

Cisco Fabric Manager and Device Manager enable comprehensive real-time and historical performance monitoring across all fabrics in the federation.

Using Cisco Performance Manager, storage administrators can step through the process of creating performance collections on fabric flows using configuration files, in which collections are defined for one or all VSANs in the fabric (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Generate Reports Across Fabrics Discovered on Different Cisco Fabric Manager Servers in a Federation

Search

Using the Cisco Fabric Manager search engine, specific management objects (entities) can be quickly accessed through a query for the entity's common name, IP address, world wide name (WWN), or alias (Figure 13).

With the Cisco Fabric Manager intuitive GUI, data center administrators can compare switch configurations side by side, perform configuration policy checks across switches, set alarm thresholds to report to third-party fault-management applications, view individual device and aggregate statistics in real time, and analyze historical performance statistics. In addition, using the Cisco MDS Configuration Analysis Tool (Figure 17), data center administrators can schedule periodic backups of running switch configurations and analyze and identify configuration differences over a specifided period of time and filter on the basis of the management object of interest (VSAN, zone, interface, IVR, etc.).

Figure 17. The Cisco Fabric Manager Switch Health Analysis Tool Allows the Storage Administrator to Scan for Operational and Configuration Problems as well as the Operational Heatlh of the Switch in the Fabric to Help Identify Physical and Logical Failures

Figure 19. The Same Capabilities Available for Monitoring the Performance of Physical Devices Are Available for Monitoring I/O Performance and Utilization of Individual NPIV-Enabled Virtual Machines

Server Consolidation Using Cisco N-Port Virtualizer

Server consolidation using blade and fabric switches increases the number of switches and hence the number domains in the network. It also increases the management associated with the increased number of Fibre Channel switches. NPV addresses both management and domain ID scalability concerns using standards-based NPIV technology. NPV converts a Fibre Channel blade switch to a host bus adapter (HBA), which does not use a Fibre Channel domain ID. The HBA gets FCIDs for attached devices from the SAN core switch to which it is connected.

When the Cisco blade switch is used in NPV mode, the SAN fabric does not see the blade switch as a switch but instead as an HBA aggregator. NPV relies on the core switch to run NPIV. The Cisco blade switch is VSAN aware. Traffic from all servers connected to a particular VSAN is uplinked to the core on N-ports that carry that VSAN. NPV offers significant configuration flexibility, with advanced traffic management capabilities.

The NPV Setup Wizard, which is part of Cisco Fabric Manager, simplifies large-scale blade deployments by guiding users through tasks (such as uplink selection, VSAN specification, and pairing of NPV switches with the correct SAN cores) that are required for batch deployment of a large number of blade switches (Figure 20). Cisco Fabric Manager also provides configuration and monitoring tools for building and managing large-scale storage networks.

Figure 20. NPV Setup Wizard

Storage Network Security

Cisco Fabric Manager provides comprehensive network security by protecting against unauthorized access and snooping through the use of the following security applications, protocols, and methods:

Network-assisted applications are enabled through the open Cisco intelligent services API (ISAPI). Cisco makes the ISAPI development platform available to original storage manufacturers (OSMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) that want to develop storage applications on the Cisco storage network platform. Cisco delivers the data path software architecture, and the OSM or ISV provides the control-path software architecture and applications.

Major Intelligent Applications

• Cisco IOA accelerates I/O over metropolitan area networks (MANs) and WANs using proven Cisco SCSI acceleration technology. Cisco IOA can also be used to enable remote tape backup and restore operations over long distances without significant throughput degradation (Figure 21).